Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work
1988; Aggarwal, Vitter
Definition
The input/output model (I/O model) [1] views the computer as consisting of a processor, internal memory (RAM), and external memory (disk). See Fig. 1. The internal memory is of limited size, large enough to hold M data items. The external memory is of conceptually unlimited size and is divided into blocks of B consecutive data items. All computation has to happen on data in internal memory. Data is brought into internal memory and written back to external memory using I/O operations (I/Os), which are performed explicitly by the algorithm. Each such operation reads or writes one block of data from or to external memory. The complexity of an algorithm in this model is the number of I/Os it performs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsRecommended Reading
Aggarwal A, Vitter JS (1988) The input/output complexity of sorting and related problems. Commun ACM 31(9):1116–1127
Ajwani D, Meyerhenke H (2010) Realistic computer models. In: Müller-Hannemann M, Schirra S (eds) Algorithm engineering: bridging the gap between algorithm theory and practice. Volume 5971 of LNCS. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, pp 194–236
Arge L (2002) External memory data structures. In: Abello J, Pardalos PM, Resende MGC (eds) Handbook of massive data sets. Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, pp 313–357
Arge L (2003) The buffer tree: a technique for designing batched external data structures. Algorithmica 37(1):1–24
Arge L, Goodrich MT, Nelson MJ, Sitchinava N (2008) Fundamental parallel algorithms for private-cache chip multiprocessors. In: Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM symposium on parallelism in algorithms and architectures, Munich, pp 197–206
Bayer R, McCreight E (1972) Organization of large ordered indexes. Acta Inform 1:173–189
Beckmann A, Meyer U, Sanders P, Singler S (2011) Energy-efficient sorting using solid state disks. Sustain Comput Inform Syst 1(2):151–163
Greiner G, Jacob R (2012) The efficiency of MapReduce in parallel external memory. In: Proceedings of the 10th Latin American symposium on theoretical informatic (LATIN). Volume 7256 of LNCS. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, pp 433–445
Nodine MH, Vitter JS (1993) Deterministic distribution sort in shared and distributed memory multiprocessors. In: Proceedings of the 5th annual ACM symposium on parallel algorithms and architectures, Velen, pp 120–129, June/July 1993
Nodine MH, Vitter JS (1995) Greed sort: an optimal sorting algorithm for multiple disks. J ACM 42(4):919–933
STXXL: C++ standard library for extra large data sets. http://stxxl.sourceforge.net. Accessed 23 June 2014
TPIE – a transparent parallel I/O-environment. http://www.madalgo.au.dk/tpie. Accessed 23 June 2014
Verbin E, Zhang Q (2013) The limits of buffering: a tight lower bound for dynamic membership in the external memory model. SIAM J Comput 42(1):212–229
Vitter JS (2006) Algorithms and data structures for external memory. Found Trends Theor Comput Sci 2(4):305–474
Vitter JS, Shriver EAM (1994) Algorithms for parallel memory I: two-level memories. Algorithmica 12(2–3):110–147
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Zeh, N., Meyer, U. (2016). I/O-Model. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_190
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_190
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2863-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2864-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering